IMC 2018: Sessions
Session 845: (Mis)Remembering First Encounter, II: West Africa
Tuesday 3 July 2018, 16.30-18.00
| Organisers: | Claudia Rogers, School of History, University of Leeds Adam Simmons, Department of History, Lancaster University |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Verena Krebs, Historisches Institut, Ruhr-Universität Bochum |
| Respondent: | David Abulafia, Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge |
| Paper 845-a | Memories of Meals: The Role of Food Encounters in European Narratives of West Africa and the Western Atlantic Islands in the 15th and Early 16th Centuries (Language: English) Index terms: Anthropology, Historiography - Modern Scholarship |
| Paper 845-b | First First Encounters: Interacting, Understanding, and Evolving before the Traditional Narrative (Language: English) Index terms: Anthropology, Economics - Trade, Historiography - Modern Scholarship, Mentalities |
| Abstract | Building on the IMC's new strand of Global Medieval Studies and the first session exploring first encounters across the Atlantic, this session switches its focus to the Atlantic African coast. First encounters in an African context range between those involved in trade, intellectual exchange, particularly influencing culture and language, and those operating within a variety of imperial ambitions, both indigenous and foreign. These papers seek to address wide ranging aspects of first encounter within these broadly defined areas, principally focusing on food exchange, the concept of the 'exotic', and the questioning of the limitations of dating first encounter and the perceived silence a lack of sources is often taken as throughout the history of the West African coast. |